How To Be A Renter In Kuala Lumpur—The Super-Stress-Free Approach

Retire To Malaysia

What's Cheap?

Dec. 30, 2008, Paris, France

Dear Overseas Opportunity Letter Reader,

The world's cheapest place to live?

You write nearly every day, dear reader, inquiring as to its whereabouts. Our typical response is to point you in the direction of four countries in particular: Ecuador, Uruguay, Nicaragua, and Argentina, where, no question, your dollars (or euro or pounds) will go a long way right now.

The trouble is, that standard reply implies that there is such a thing as the "world's cheapest place to live."

Cost of living is both relative and a moving target. What's expensive to me can be affordable to you, and vice versa, depending how we choose to live.

At Home In Laos?

Dec. 29, 2008, Monte Carlo, Monaco: 

Dear Overseas Opportunity Letter Reader,

Intrepid Correspondent Paul Terhorst sends his first dispatch from Laos this morning:

"I'm in the northern Lao hill country, my first stop on a three-week overland trip through Laos. I'm traveling with friends Roger and Naree, who speak Thai, somewhat similar to Lao.

"Our first night, still in Thailand, we stopped at the home of the Rico Foundation, a foundation to help rural Thai kids. The next morning we took a bus to the border, crossed the upper Mekong River in a long, narrow boat, climbed up the bank to the immigration office, and paid US$35 for a Lao visa on arrival. We were in.

Where Provence Meets The Alps Meets The Cote D'Azur

Dec. 28, 2008
Monte Carlo, Monaco

Dear Overseas Opportunity Letter Reader,

Matisse discovered the town, but an hour northeast of Nice, where he had been living for three decades, near the end of his life...and, once he'd seen it, decided not to leave but to stay on to create the masterpiece of his career.

If France's Mediterranean coast is bejeweled with a string of sparkling sea towns, playgrounds of the rich and yachting...a few kilometers inland is the retreat of the artist and the romantic. Here, where Provence meets the Alps meets the Cote d'Azur, towns dating to the Middle Ages cling to the sides of the rock hills and are sometimes so perfectly charming you wonder how man managed to create them without help from Disney.